Chapter Two:  The Flood of 1919

OK folks, this is it, the one you have all been waiting for:  The Flood of 1919!

But, oops, oops, we have to build a little anticipation, first (another trick we writers use).

Everyone has a bent to aggrandize and idealize, especially about the past and other people’s lives.  The old days really were NOT all that good, and the grass on other people’s side of the fence has a lot of dead spots in it.

But I gather life in south Jones County, although hard, really wasn’t all that bad, and could have had a certain appeal from afar.  Those who were willing to work  -- and work hard – did pretty well, but those who didn’t, didn’t.  The land was “well watered” (as the Bible says), and fertile enough for farms to support large families.  There was an active social life – schools, Masonic lodges, churches and all the activities therein and surrounding them, including “brush arbor” meetings in the summer. (Daddy tells of a “brush arbor” meeting where the preacher grew suddenly quiet and a group of men in white robes and hoods marched in, left an offering on the alter, turned and left.  Everyone was staring at their feet to see whose shoes they recognized.  For some strange reason, his father did not attend the meeting that night.) There were cold, rainy days swapping tales and playing checkers around the wood heater at Cook’s store – but especially, there were Saturdays at the watermill. My great-grandfather, Latson Douglas Anderson owned the watermill, and it was a social hub.  Every few Saturdays men and their children would “go to mill” to have cornmeal ground for the next few weeks.  The men would visit, the kids would fish or splash in the millpond and cases of law would be settled, for the Justice of the Peace held court at the watermill.

I will do a separate chapter about tales from the watermill.

But life could be pretty brutal: I have had a taste of it. As an idiot, I have yet to realize that one can purchase vegetables at the grocery store or heat the house simply by turning a dial, so I have spent many an August day on the business end of a hoe, chainsaw, axe of splitting maul.  The folks in the old days spent most of their time doing this, plus other things, by muscle power. But, in balance, considering the times, life wasn’t bad, and people from the vast frozen wasteland “up north” (anywhere upstream from Memphis) must have looked on with certain envy.

Some people from up north (I think Indiana) decided they could get rich farming in south Jones County.  They bought up a bunch of land and built several “fine barns.”  I guess they had heard about the ferocious thunderstorms “down south,” and they had a paranoid fear of lightning, because they installed lightning rods on all the barns.  They all burned from lightning strikes, the would-be farmers sold out and went back up north, defeated, with their tails between their legs.

Another fellow who decided to get rich quick was a high school teacher by the name of Henry H. Higgins (?).  I am not sure about that last name, but it is something that goes good with “Henry H.” so, we will use it. Anyway, Henry H. decided there had to be a better way to make a living than teaching high school.  He looked, with envy at the Tatum’s in Hattiesburg and the Greens, Gardiners, Rogers and Gilcrests in Laurel and decided sawmilling was the way. Yep, he was going to be an industrialist and join the gilded class.

He built a sawmill on the banks of the Leaf River.  It must have been quite an operation: it included a village of workers’ housing and a commissary.  I think things went pretty well until the winter of 1918-1919, which was unusually cold and wet. The rains just kept coming and the river just kept rising.  Wiley Emmons got concerned and caulked his boat in preparation for evacuation.  He owned the only boat in the community.

The river spilled over its banks and began flooding the sawmill village, so the residents left for high ground.  The commissary was on a little higher ground, and safe for the time being, but the water continued to rise.  Henry H. feared losing his goods, so he borrowed Wiley’s boat to ferry them to high ground. The rain had stopped, but the river was still rising.  The weather was bitterly cold when Henry H. and two other men paddled across the flooded swamp to rescue his goods.  I don’t know what subject ol’ Henry H. taught, but it probably wasn’t physics, because he did not realize that three grown men in a small boat did not leave much capacity for commissary goods.

They filled the boat and set out on the return voyage. They didn’t make it.  The overloaded boat capsized and sank, spilling the goods and the three hapless men into the freezing water.  They made it to a gum tree, climbed it, and began to do the only logical thing:  holler for help. They hollered all night, but no one heard them – or so they thought.  Plenty of people heard them.  My mother said their voices carried mightily in the cold night air and people heard them for miles around, but the men in the tree could not hear their responses because it was drowned out by the sloshing and splashing of water in the swamp.

The main problem was there was only one boat in the community, and they had just sunk it.  Oh, no! What to do?  Wiley set about building another one, a task that would take three days.

Now let me pause here, and do a little “’splaining,” as Ricky Ricardo used to demand of Lucy.  Three days might seem like a long time to nail some boards together into a boat.  But it is not that easy.  I know from dear experience.  When I was a kid I was obsessed with boats – especially sailboats.  I wanted one so bad I could taste it, but my daddy was about as likely to buy me a boat as an airplane.  I decided to build one – a skiff, at first, and then work my way up to a sailboat. (I eventually built my sailboat, but it was wrecked in a hurricane.  Maybe I will write a chapter about the great shipwreck of 220 S. Tenth Ave. later).  Anyway, we idiots don’t have enough sense to know what we can’t do. I was 13 years old then I ordered plans from Popular Mechanics, spent the $17 I had saved from my bottle-returning and pecan-picking money on lumber, and commenced.  The only tools I had were some of old Wiley’s – a wood-bodied plane, a rasp, a brace with a selection of bits, a drawknife, a few “C” clamps and my Daddy’s hammer with a taped handle and one claw missing, his dull handsaw and my mother’s sewing tape measure. I built the boat – but it took all summer.

But, as I was saying, The men were stuck in the tree, in freezing weather, with wet clothes and no hope of rescue (or so they thought)  One of them decided their only hope for salvation was through prayer.  Since Henry H. was the boss and the most educated present, he ask him to voice their prayer. Evidently Ol’ Henry H. wasn’t a religious man or didn’t have much practice praying aloud, for the preamble to his prayer became the stuff of local legend.  When men were sitting around Cook’s heater on a cold, rainy day and there arose a lull in the conversation, one would recite it, too much guffawing and knee slapping: “Dear God, this is Henry H. Higgins.  I used to be a teacher, but now I am a sawmill man.”

But God heard and answered Henry H.’s prayer.  Wiley finished his boat and rescued the three miss-adventurers.  The flood ruined the sawmill.  Henry decided that was not the way to riches, after all, and returned to teaching.  What you want to bet that, when his back was turned to the class as he wrote on the blackboard, some boy in the back of the room didn’t turn to his classmate and mouth: “Dear God, This is Henry H. Higgins.  I used to be a teacher, but now I am a sawmill man.”?